Regional Innovation Policy

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Regional Innovation Policy Impact Assessment and
Benchmarking Commissions long term perspective
Ljubljana, Slovenia 7 June 2005
Agnieszka Turynska, call coordinator Support for
innovation, Unit D2 Directorate-General
Enterprise and Industry
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Importance of regional innovation benchmarking

• European countries are recently experiencing the
  revival of regionalization
• Regions are the most efficient framework to
  address issues like innovation performance,
  application of new technologies and
  competitiveness
• More than 120 regions have used RIS/RITTS
  methodology to introduce / further develop their
  regional innovation policies

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Importance of regional innovation benchmarking

• Regions have not yet introduced systems which
  would allow the systematic review of their
  regional research and innovation policies and
  the assessment of the efficiency and
  responsiveness of the measures on the business
  community
• The comprehensive benchmarking of the impact
  that research and innovation policy might have
  at the regional level has not been possible
  until now
• Regionalisation triggers the need for assessing
  the impact of innovation policies within
  regional dimension

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Interest is in the regions

• The interest exists in the regions and countries
• Workshop organised by DG ENTR (May 2003)
  gathered many regional innovation players
• Some activities are undertaken in certain
  European regions (Prague, British regions,
  Italian regions and others)
• Some activities are undertaken in regions
  outside Europe (United States, Canada, Asia and
  Pacific countries)
• High participation in the 2nd strand of last
  years DG ENTR IRE call for proposals

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Regional innovation policies impact assessment
and benchmarking pilot action

• Strand 2 of the call for proposals Regional
  Innovation Policies,
• including new tools and approaches
  FP6-2004-INNOV-4
• 27 proposals submitted
• 8 proposals retained after the evaluation
  process
• Negotiation with all 8 consortia concluded and
  projects started on 1st June 2005.
• 47 regions from 22 different countries will be
  represented in this integrated benchmarking
  effort, from which 16 regions from 8 New Member
  States

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Objective of the pilot action

• to stimulate the dynamic processes of innovation
  policy making in the regions
• Involving regions actively in the elaboration of
  an Innovation Scoreboard for European
  regions (bottom-up approach)
• Using existing methodologies developed for
  assessing the impact of innovation policies
  at regional level, and for creating a
  framework for benchmarking

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Objective of the pilot action

• to stimulate the dynamic processes of innovation
  policy making in the regions
• Aiming at developing methodologies and tools to
  further influence the policy-making and
  decision-taking processes in the regions
• On the basis of the benchmark findings the
  regions should be able to analyse the reasons
  for the differing performances and to
  identify successful policy measures and good
  practices

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Some of the activities undertaken so far

• STRINNOP Thematic Network (Strengthening the
  Regional Innovation Profile)
• 12 member regions
• To benchmark the members innovation strategies,
  in order to raise the standards to the highest
  ones
• It proposed a set of regional innovation
  indicators
• Including quantitative indicators from European
  Innovation Scoreboard
• Including quantitative and qualitative
  indicators, e.g. from RIS/RITTS analyses, other
  surveys, expert enquiries, etc

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Some of the activities undertaken so far

• STRINNOP Encountered barriers to measuring the
  innovation profile and performance at regional
  level
• Limited availability of data (not compulsory
  for the regions to provide the data,
  availability varies significantly between
  regions)
• High price of collecting data (money and time
  consuming)
• Data very often not up-to-date
• Difficulties to achieve the agreement between
  regions on the most important indicators
• Lack of transparency and common understanding
  for qualitative indicators

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Some of the activities undertaken so far

• II. Innoba-SME Thematic Network (Overcoming
  Innovation Barriers in SMEs)
• 16 member regions to develop and set up
• A number of methodologies allowing each region
  to prioritise a number of key factors to
  improve its innovation system
• An evaluation model for the monitoring and
  assessment of an innovation support
  infrastructure
• A typology of obstacles preventing SMEs from
  being more innovative

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Some of the activities undertaken so far

• ERIK (European Regions Knowledge based Innovation
  Network) TWG reports
• TWG Services and Support to start-ups and
  spin-offs
• Providing some valuable instruments to measure
  regional performances of the start-up process
• TWG Industry Science Relations
• Providing the structure for the analysis of
  regional good practices (identification of good
  practice indicators) related to Science-Industry
  Relations
• TWG Clusters and Business Networks
• Building benchmarking, monitoring and evaluating
  bases for cluster and network interventions

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Some of the activities undertaken so far

• Italian regions example
• Aims at creating a common theoretical framework
  for measuring and comparing innovation in
  Italian regions
• Benchmarking of innovation performance of 20
  Italian regions and analysing therole of
  regional government policies in influencing
  regional competitiveness
• Outcome RLIS Region Lazio Innovation
  Scoreboard 2002, 2003 and 2004.
• RLIS measure the innovation performance of
  Italian regions. The results of the index help
  regions to identify their relative strengths and
  weaknesses
• Set of 26 indicators (RLIS 2004) extracted mainly
  from the EIS and CIS latest dataavailable from
  ISTAT and EUROSTAT

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Some of the activities undertaken so far

• V. Greek example - URENIO (Urban and Regional
  Innovation Research Unit)
• Observatory for Innovation and Development
• One of its objectives is to develop the data
  bases and indicators for the measurement of
  innovative performance at the regional level
• One of the components is an online benchmarking
  application, allowing companies to monitor
  their performance

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Some of the activities undertaken so far

• VI. Other studies / reports / projects
• Project METROPOLIS Innovation indicators of
  Prague's region
• NISTEP report Preliminary Study on Regional
  Science and Technology Indicators
• Interreg IIIc - UNDERSTAND project European
  Regions UNDER way towards STANDard indicators for
  benchmarking of information society
• Canada Exploring Canadas Innovation
  character Benchmarking Against Global Best
  report on Canadas innovation performance has
  been issued recently. It assesses Canadas
  performance against 10 other developed
  countries on 17 innovation indicators. On
  regional level An overview of Statistical
  Indicators of Regional Innovation in Canada A
  Provincial Comparison.

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Useful tools for the exercise

• I. European Innovation Scoreboard
• Annual assessment of innovation performance in
  the EU
• Elaborated as such for the first time in 2001
  and for regional data in 2002 and 2003
• In 2002 seven innovation indicators introduced
  mainly in Human Resources and Knowledge
  creation (coverage of human resources,
  employment in high technology sectors,
  creation of new knowledge through RD and
  patents) plus GDP per capita at regional
  level
• In 2003, more diffusion-based innovation,
  although still towards RD

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Useful tools for the exercise

• II. European Trend Chart on Innovation
• Provides a common framework for collecting and
  analysing of information on national
  innovation policies
• Innovation Trend Chart does not include the
  regional dimension
• This framework could be also used for collecting
  information at regional level, thus ensuring
  comparability of qualitative information on
  regional and national innovation polices

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Useful tools for the exercise

• III. RINNO - Regional prosperity through
  innovation in Europe
• Joint DG ENTR DG REGIO initiative
• D/B containing around 400 validated innovation
  schemes in European regions
• central resource for regions to
• find information about work in the field of
  innovation promotion (how others are innovating)
• share lessons
• keep track of new ideas and experiments

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Useful tools for the exercise

• IV. MLP Regional Benchmarking priority topic
• Mutual Learning Platform on investing in research
  and innovation for European regions
• Launched on 18 April 2005
• 3 Priority topics Regional Foresight, Regional
  Innovation Benchmarking and Regional Profiles in
  Innovation and Research
• 2 workshops per priority topic
• First workshop for Regional Innovation
  Benchmarking on 16 September 2005

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Useful tools for the exercise

• MLP Regional Innovation Benchmarking workshops
  to contribute through
• Providing knowledge and assisting regions in
  the following steps
• Establishment of the assessment methodology /
  creation of tools
• Establishment of indicators for the evaluation
  and benchmarking of the performance of the
  regional innovation strategies and policies
• Assessment of the impact of the RIS/RITTS
  processes in the relevant partner regions
• Sharing the experience and networking the
  regions
• Disseminating the information on the progress
  achieved

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Possible actions in the future

• Some possible actions foreseen for the near
  future to develop a culture of impact assessment
  on innovation policy
• to map and benchmark research programmes at
  both national and international levels
• to reinforce monitoring of innovation policy in
  the Member States
• to further establish tools for impact
  assessment in the field of innovation
  policy

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Regional benchmarking

• Thank you for your attention